SEBI on Tuesday barred six persons, including Amit Goenka, and Jayneer Infrapower and Multiventures Pvt Ltd from selling or diluting their shareholding in Shirpur Gold Refinery, a part of Essel Group of Companies. Amit Goenka, who is the son of Essel Group chairman Subhash Chandra Goenka, is the chairman and promoter of Shirpur Gold Refinery. The other persons included Mukund Galgali, Vipin Choudhary, Dinesh Kanodia Sharvan Shah and Ashok Sanghavi. The market regulator in its investigation found that all the entities conceived and implemented a fraudulent scheme through financial statements for diversion of funds of Shirpur Gold Refinery. SEBI had received complaints that alleging that the loans taken by Shirpur fron banks and financial institutions had not been used for operations of the company but instead were siphoned off to companies under the control of Subhash Chandra and his family. It was found that there was a diversion of Rs 404 crore from Shirpur to the three debtors which are promoter connected entities. The capital markets regulator also said that the Shirpur Gold Refinery and its directors tried to mislead the investigation and also the audit by failing to cooperate in providing the information sought by it and the forensic auditors. Shirpur has been taken to NCLT under IBC by its financial lenders.
